


Calm and Accepting

by Hawkbringer



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Abrupt Ending, Aged-Up Character(s), Demon Sebastian Michaelis, Jealousy, M/M, Mental Instability, Mentions of canon-typical violence, Role Reversal, Sebastian just does not know how to deal with being jealous of Lizzie, Sebastian needing Ciel to calm him down, Undressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:07:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23317357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawkbringer/pseuds/Hawkbringer
Summary: Sebastian is slowly losing his mind over how close Elizabeth is getting to Ciel, as the boy grows and the date of their inevitable marriage is announced. His irritation grows to the point that Ciel begins to notice it, and he takes Sebastian's hands in his one night.
Relationships: Sebastian Michaelis/Ciel Phantomhive
Comments: 1
Kudos: 54





	Calm and Accepting

**Author's Note:**

> Lizzie stays just as pink-cheeked and cheerful as she grows, and her vitality threatens Sebastian, in a couple of ways. 
> 
> Their approaching marriage brings on more public scrutiny, and the servants are no better at their cover jobs than they ever were, so they begin tittering and stumbling even worse than usual, with the increased social pressure - which he doesn't feel because he's perfect because of demon-magic - so they just irritate him with their increased failure rate. 
> 
> Lizzie herself grows more and more into herself, into vitality and all-encompassing, darkness-eclipsing sunshine. She represents everything Sebastian would hate for Ciel to choose - if Ciel chooses Lizzie, her vitality and her life, would mean, to Sebastian, that the play was over. Ciel had failed. And he had better take his soul right the fuck then. It would be /over/. Done. And he doesn't want his time with Ciel to /be/ done. He doesn't take too close a look at /why/...
> 
> He used to /like/ Lizzie's visits, even, when she and Ciel were younger. The girl had a way of wrong-footing his stoic little master that Sebastian so rarely saw. With a small amount of unholy glee, Sebastian looked forward to Ciel's exhaustion, to the dropping of his facade of 'fully-responsible earl,' to making fun of him for his child-like behavior in the hours and days following a visit from his cousin. 
> 
> But as the years march on, Ciel gets better and better at keeping /up/ that facade, and Sebastian, so often denied the pleasure of watching his little lord stumble and falter, begins poking at the facade, all over, trying to find where it gives. It is in this mental state of weakness-sniffing, stress-testing, that when they fall together after some fight or other, another dark night in another dark alley, that Sebastian discovers that Ciel's weakness is /touch/.

Lizzie becomes more and more an independent woman, full of life and clearer vision and representing all the future that Ciel will, by rights, never have. Sebastian tells himself that it's irritation at having someone, potentially, tempt his prey away from him. And that it's a /human/ is even more galling. He might feel he has to work twice as hard to make himself more indispensable, to belittle her in small ways. Maybe it's even a contract-bond-mental-link thing and Ciel can sense /his/ irritation when she speaks to him. She'd still smile, but she'll have aged well, into a full figure and warm pink skin. It is perhaps the color of her face that irritates Sebastian, in the beginning. So healthy, compared to his pale master. She is so vital, so full of life. She would bear him lovely children, and so dearly wants to... 

Sebastian stands at attention as they talk, a respectable distance away, and straightens his back to prevent himself from folding his arms over his chest. Ciel should not want what she has to offer, he seethes to himself. She offers life while he offers death. Ciel's life was forfeit years ago. He will have Ciel's life, and /she/ will have his death. Visions of the vital woman sobbing before a gravestone as the demon watches, impossibly sated, from an invisible vantage point, placate his misplaced rage for a time, but only for a time. 

***

Their marriage date is announced, completely without Ciel's consent on the matter, Sebastian is certain, at balls all through the Season, and the demon's agitation rises to the point that even Ciel notices it. 

Sebastian does not, of course, fail in his duties in any way, and kills with the same ruthless and sharp-grinned efficiency he always has, but seems to be reveling a bit more in it these days, keeping his hand on their necks as their blood pours out of them, performing minor miracles to cleanse his clothing of the stuff. When Ciel comments on it, Sebastian replies that butlers don't kill for their masters, demons do. Ciel counters that butlers obey their masters, as demons also do, and he orders him to stop letting that amount of blood get on his clothes in the first place. 

Most of the next several murders are stranglings. 

When Ciel notices this, one unremarkable night after the final man of the group has fallen, all of them strangled gleefully, he grabs Sebastian's perfectly unstained white-gloved hand and squeezes it. The butler's eyebrows fly upward and he holds still for his lord's pleasure. 

Ciel contemplates the false hand attached to its false body, then draws it to his own throat. The demon draws in a sharp breath and its eyes widen briefly but makes no other move. 

"You're waiting, aren't you." 

It isn't a question, and Sebastian doesn't treat it like one. 

"You want to feel /my/ heartbeat slowing and failing, do you not?" 

This one /is/, and Sebastian closes his eyes and smiles easily, sharp teeth glinting in the faint lamplight of the deserted alley.

"Of course, my lord. I am waiting, oh so patiently waiting, until the day I can feast upon your precious soul." He tightens the hand's grip of his own accord, but the failure of the pulse to race puts lie to his own false bravado and his gleaming smile fades. 

He takes a moment to contemplate their silent surroundings and then uses the friction of Ciel's hand upon his own to pull his hand from its glove. He pockets the limp fabric and places his hand back upon Ciel's neck, fingers spidering gently up its column to press under his jaw, where the pulse is strongest, the delicate vessels so very close to the surface. 

His fingers are far too warm. They should be cold as death, Ciel thinks, startled by the human-like heat to them. Their touch isn't alien at all, isn't frightening. 

Not for the first time, Ciel wonders about the foulness of the being before him, wonders how anything so beautiful and perfect could be /evil/, but he supposes he'll find out.

The moment drags on, several heartbeats marked in unhurried thuds passing Sebastian's fingertips snug against his jugular. His butler's face is somber, so very somber, /nearly deathly serious, if one could excuse the pun,/ Ciel thinks, and he doesn't drop his gaze, waiting for the moment when the demon would smile carelessly again, put up the facade he's so used to seeing, the self-satisfied masochist. 

He doesn't. The demon only stares at him seriously, so very seriously, and Ciel desperately wants to ask him /what/ he thinks he's doing, holding up their return to the manor just for the thrill of pressing his bare fingers to his master's naked throat... 

He's still silent as the demon draws a (possibly unnecessary) breath and opens his mouth, blinks twice, and closes it, then looks away. He hurriedly tugs his glove back on and spins Ciel to face the wall, then wraps one arm just beneath his armpits and leaps. 

He has never carried Ciel in such a fashion before and the boy scrabbles to hold tight to the arm about his chest before he notices that the other has clamped tight around him below his waist, the bones of his hips digging into Sebastian's forearm. 

He is quite safe like this - at least, as safe as he's ever been when his butler has carried him. 

Ciel allows his hard-built trust in the demon to seep away the tension in his body and the demon holds him all the closer for it. Ciel has trouble ignoring the sensation of Sebastian's human heart, pounding against his left shoulder blade where Sebastian has crushed him to his chest; neither can he ignore his macabre imaginings of what the substance that false heart is pumping might actually be.

As Sebastian is undressing him that night, Ciel is still thinking of heartbeats and the grotesque pictures he has seen of dissected specimens of the organ in his textbooks. He cannot remember if he has seen one with his own eyes, in the crushed rib-cages of men and women violently separated from their lives with no thought spared for dirtied livery.

He opens his eyes and shakes his head to dispel such gruesome thoughts, as they are not conducive to nights of gentle sleep. Sebastian glances up at him and his eyes linger longer than they would have only a week ago. Ciel gently cocks his head in return and speaks.

"Tell me, Sebastian. What are you contemplating?" Sebastian's face looks like it wants to smile, but doesn't manage it as he finishes the buttons of his lord's nightshirt and remains kneeling on the floor. His lips part slowly as they open, but the demon closes them again. Ciel narrows his eyes. 

"I've never seen you at a loss for words, Sebastian. Do you want me to make it an order?"

"No need, my lord," the butler replies breezily, turning his head and closing his eyes with a smile that stutters at its corners. "I am simply contemplating how to phrase it."

"How to phrase what?" the boy asks bluntly, thinking this the answer to his first question.

Sebastian takes a breath and addresses the canopy above Ciel's bed. "Heartbeats, my lord." Ciel's eyebrows jump but the demon misses it.

"I'd appreciate it if you'd look at your master while you're talking to him," he prods scathingly, even though this is directly counter to the butler's aesthetic of omnipresent invisibility.

"/Your/ heartbeat, my lord," the demon continues after obeying the barely-spoken command.

Ciel makes a noncommittal sound. "Hmm. Is that why you put your disgusting fingers against my neck earlier, without your gloves on?" 

His eyebrows draw together very slightly, giving him an ever-so-slightly distressed look. "You... find my touch disgusting, my young lord?"

Ciel had, of course, found it nothing of the sort, and so crosses his arms and hmpfs again. "Mmm... Your filthy, unclean hands. So many deaths, by these hands..." He looks down at the now-gloved limbs in question, currently resting atop his butler's knees, and puts out his hands as if to grasp them. 

Without question, Sebastian lifts them, letting Ciel take hold of them and place them, palm down, atop his thin knees. 

"So much blood," the boy murmurs, dragging them upward and placing them on his slim shoulders. "They should feel dirty, somehow," he wonders aloud, having slid his hands out from under his butler's, now resting them atop his own shoulders, hands atop the demon's gloves. 

He opens his eyes and his hands shoot out, tracing down the halves of Sebastian's open jacket, inward to his shirt buttons. For a wild moment, Sebastian wonders if the boy is going to attempt to undo them. He hardly finds it less shocking when the thin hands come to rest on his chest, one placed directly over his borrowed heart. 

"Instead, they're the closest thing to comfort I've ever felt... since that month." 

There are a thousand things he should say to that, a thousand ways to beguile and to tempt. 

Not a single one comes to mind. 

He lowers his eyes and squeezes his lord's shoulders very slightly. "I am... honored that you think that of me," he whispers, head bowed. "I..." the false-faced man begins, then bites his own lip to stop his words. Then he lets out his breath in a mirthless little laugh that acknowledges the irony of what he is about to say. "When I know your heart beats... that is a form of comfort... to me." 

He draws a breath and does not look at his charge as he rises, pressing the boy back against the mattress and leaning half over him, the small hands still pressed against his chest. 

He swallows before he speaks, unsettled to his bones that the boy seems content to lie beneath him /on his own bed./ His face is pressed to the covers beside Ciel's left ear, so the boy hears perfectly as he whispers hoarsely, "Your /life/ should not comfort me. I should dream of your death, yet whenever I do, I find myself... /only/ wanting to put it off. As long as you draw breath, young Ciel Phantomhive, I am... content." He growls, a true, deep, inhuman sound and when he speaks again, the consonants hiss in a way that has Ciel imagining fangs impeding his tongue. 

"This is utterly unacceptable. As a butler /and/ a demon. Why do you let me touch you this way, youngling? I could /end/ you. I should /want/ to end you. I do not." His body begins to vibrate with suppressed rage. "This is madness. What sort of demon am I? All I crave is your touch, your breath, your--" He draws in a hitching, wavering inhale that tells the master that his servant is close to sobbing. 

He pushes himself up, staring down at the impassive face, the impossibly trusting impassive face beneath him, and wonders for a hysterical moment if the child is perhaps utterly twisted in a way even /he/ cannot comprehend-- Then said child cuts off his thought process entirely by pushing his hands up to cup Sebastian's face. 

The demon fights to keep small tremors from his facial muscles, but doesn't quite succeed as Ciel strokes his jaw, seemingly oblivious to everything his servant has just said, as though he is merely curiously exploring the new territory of his servant's skin. Sebastian's eyes are flaming red and his brows are gathered harshly close, but Ciel's hands dance across his skin as if the warnings clear as day were not present at all. 

His face twists further in something surpassing exasperation and he responds to the incessant stroking by moving his hands to Ciel's neck again and digging curled knuckles under the jawline, impeding the progress of blood from the boy's head. Only once his face starts turning slightly purple does Sebastian remove his hands with a growl and take Ciel's shoulders to shake the child. 

"Are you utterly insane?" he asks, nearly shouting. In the next second he knocks the boy's hands from his face and the slightly-affronted expression on his lord's face prompts him to add, "Are you deaf too, you infuriating slip of a boy? Do I have to call for your aunt?" The mention of his relative makes the boy's face fall, as he pictures Angelina Durless in that moment and he shakes his head mutely. 

He puts his hands back on Sebastian's face, causing the demon's features to twist in anguish, and he speaks. Sebastian listens.

"I fail to understand why you are making things so difficult, Sebastian." It sounds like a pleasant jibe and Sebastian cannot see at all how that could be. "If you find my breathing pleasant, and I find your touch comforting, I see no reason why we should not both enjoy each other and ourselves." He smiles, a little incredulously. "If we had just discovered a mutual enjoyment of /chess/, there would be no obstacles to our sitting down at the board, now, would there?" His smile turns sarcastic, still so self-assured that Sebastian's borrowed heart aches. "Of course, doing so in polite company would be most unacceptable, but there is no danger to us here." 

His face falls and he speaks next in his command-giving tone. "Sebastian. There is no danger to us here, is there?" 

Sebastian shakes his head mutely, still torn between the unusual sensations of desiring to flee for his very sanity, and to clutch this boy to him until their skins melded into one. That mute response smooths the boy's pale countenance. 

"Then shall I make it an order?"

"Make...what...?" Sebastian rasps out, voice gone hoarse from raising it. Or maybe because his throat has suddenly gone completely dry. 

"I want you to touch me, Sebastian. I want your hands upon my skin." He blinks once, guilelessly. "I shall of course return the favor." 

Sebastian shakes his head, a pitying smile breaking out as he nearly laughs at the impossibility. "I would touch you in ways that you would--"

"I know, Sebastian." The demon raises an eyebrow at being interrupted. "Do you remember how you found me?" He blinks as he does so, all the gory details springing to mind but none relevant to the current topic of conversation. The boy's face has gone somber again. 

"I know the kind of ways a boy like me can be touched by a man like you." 

Sebastian's eyes widen as his blood runs cold. 

To think the boy had experienced /that/ and /still/ presented as much dignity as he did to the world... His soul must be of /such/ a caliber... 

"I can order you to touch me /and/ not to harm me." He raises an eyebrow and Sebastian nods in reply. The lord has only to /think/ it loudly enough, when they are this close. His body thrills again and Sebastian feels sick. Is the boy really going to...

He does.

"Sebastian. I order you. Touch me in ways that will please you. And me." He lifts an eyebrow carelessly. "I trust you have sufficient experience to accomplish this order without incident?" 

"I am not lacking in experience, my lord," his butler rejoins with a hint of his usual nettle-stinging malice. "I am..." He shakes his head and moves to lever himself up off of Ciel. 

The boy immediately shoves up into a sitting position and demands, "/What/ are you doing?" before noticing that Sebastian is taking off his shoes. "Are you planning on getting naked?" he queries, trying to keep the sudden flare of interest out of his tone. The way Sebastian pauses, slightly shocked, tells him he didn't quite succeed.

"Yes, my lord. It is the best way to... to carry out your order, after all." /Making me take pleasure from him against my own wishes... such an unwitting sadist, my master is!/ 

Said master makes a noise of consent and crosses his legs at the knee, trying to prevent himself from quivering at simply the /idea/ of having Sebastian, bare-skinned, and his to touch. Sebastian takes the move to signal impatience and strips off his outer layers more swiftly. 

When he is wearing only his white shirt and trousers, he slows, his hands on the top button of his button-down. Ciel takes this as his cue to, perhaps, encourage this course of action, and raises his fingers to his own collared throat and begins eagerly working at the complicated fasteners. 

Despite his fingers' small size, the dexterity required to undo his nightshirt's buttons eludes him, and Sebastian swoops down to do it for him, a smile tugging the corner of his mouth at how little time the boy had spent wearing it, but even still, it would have to be washed....

**Author's Note:**

> Written 6th of Feb 2015, or earlier.
> 
> Ended before the hurt-comfort sex, saaaad. Oh well, guess you, dear reader, will have to write your own!


End file.
